


Cyclical

by janetcarter



Series: The Greatest Adventure [6]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Babies, F/M, Guilt, Unplanned Pregnancy, made a lab rat, ultrasounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28708311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/pseuds/janetcarter
Summary: Lyta never wanted anyone else to go through everything she'd endured. Too bad her and G'Kar's daughter would never have a choice.
Relationships: Lyta Alexander & Original Character, Lyta Alexander/G'Kar
Series: The Greatest Adventure [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740013
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Cyclical

**Author's Note:**

> For the Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt "Made a lab rat."

She awoke underwater, floating like in a dream. 

  
  
Her eyes didn't burn like she'd expected. No, she could see clearly, as clearly as one could through the thick, curved glass, but… everything was still a haze. 

  
  
The encounter suits studying her told her everything she needed to know: she'd succeeded. They'd let her in. And now they were doing… well, who knew what they were doing to her? It wasn't like she could ask, and she doubted she'd get much of an answer if she did. 

  
  
She looked to her left, where tiny creatures hung suspended in their own tubes. They were too far to make out the details, but their alien silhouettes curled into themselves like fetuses.

  
  
Farther beyond them were bigger tubes, rows and rows and rows of them stretching so far back she couldn't tell where they ended… or even where they began, really, since she assumed she was in one just like them.

When she looked back in front of her, the Vorlons were gone. 

  
  
Cloudier and drowsier, her eyes drifted shut.

  
-

  
She wasn't upset that she was pregnant; for the most part, anyway. It certainly put a damper on her plans, but her body had been through worse. She'd have the baby, hand it over to G'Kar, and be on her way.

  
  
She was upset because the deal she'd made with the Narn government was becoming far too real far too fast. It had been a necessity: aid now, sacrifice later. But even to someone like her, someone who had lived through experimentation and weaponization in their purest forms, it was a future abstract enough to not keep her up at night. 

  
  
Or, it had been until now.

  
  
She was in her old bunk resting, hand curved over her flat stomach. It was the only place she could really be alone in their tiny ship. G'Kar didn't _mean_ to invade her space, but when every room is otherwise shared… he couldn't help it. However, she was starting to think that after he got the news it became less unintentional. He was excited and worried and everything she would be if she were planning to be a parent instead of a vessel. And it was grating. 

  
  
It felt like everything they'd worked to build together had turned inside out. Their relationship wasn't about _them_ anymore; it was about bettering the Narn Regime. It was about taking an innocent little baby who didn't ask to be made and turning it into a lab rat.

She was no better than the Vorlons when it really came down to it, but what could she do about it? No matter her part in this whole mess, she had her responsibilities elsewhere. She had a war to fight.

  
  
And war, where countless innocent telepaths of all ages were _already_ relying on her, had to come first.

  
  
\- 

  
  
She finally agreed to G'Kar's pleas to see a doctor at a little over three months in. He blathered on and on about how Narn gestation was completed closer to two months, and how things could get dangerous fast if she kept making careless assumptions.

  
  
All she heard was that this might be over for her sooner than she thought, and if it meant seeing a doctor, one she trusted, she was willing to do it. And if that wasn't the case, at least she could maybe get some anti-nausea medication. (G'Kar tried, but the herbs only seemed to make her sicker.) 

It was lucky Stephen wasn't on earth when they called. He never did seem like the type to be content staying in one place without the variety of Babylon 5. He was in for a real treat with her and G'Kar's newest predicament, then, which… she hated because he'd be so _Stephen_ about it. But he was one of the few people, let alone doctors specializing in xenobiology, she knew she could trust.

  
  
Trust was something she had to care about, even if she couldn't bring herself to care about the _thing_ growing inside of her and making her feel so sick. She had no plans to parent it, but the least she could do was make sure the Corps didn't find out, that she wasn't going to put someone else through everything the Vorlons had done to her. 

  
  
However, it was actually getting that first scan that broadened her narrow priorities far beyond comfort. 

  
  
Stephen, after an hour of nosy questions and medical ramblings and insufferable lectures, had secured the device to her bloated stomach. It took some configuring, a _lot_ of configuring, but… after a moment, he beamed. "We have a heartbeat!"

  
  
"That's wonderful!" G'Kar exclaimed. His eyes were glued to the monitor and… God, he might have even _clapped._

 _  
__  
_Lyta was still eyeing the device itself, listening to a foreign, underwater heartbeat thump against her own. It took a moment, but she finally swallowed and looked up to the monitor and…

  
  
And there was the baby.

  
It didn't really look like a baby, not yet. It looked more like the fetal silhouettes she'd seen on the Vorlon Homeworld, but it didn't change the storm of emotions surging through her. Picking them apart was impossible, but she felt sicker than usual, heart heavy and stomach in knots.

Growing up in Psi Corps made it hard to get attached; it was kind of what she was counting on if she was being honest. Kids were stripped away from their blood family, even if those family members were telepaths themselves. Individual families dividing up the Corps was a liability, a weakness in the process of training children to be obedient little weapons. Hell, she was barely two years old when her mother turned her over to them and never saw her again. So this shouldn't have been any different. This should have been a routine pregnancy, reproduction for the sake of offspring, and then an easy parting of ways.

She'd tried, she was still trying, to treat it that way. But knowing she was pregnant was something far different than actually seeing her baby on a screen, than hearing its heartbeat…

  
  
It had a _heartbeat._ It was real, it was alive, it was _relying_ on her and…

And she'd already let it down.

G'Kar's hand took her own. It wasn't until she felt it and looked down that she realized her vision was blurry. "Are you alright, Lyta?"

Her lip trembled. Tears had already started to fall. She quickly wiped them away with her sleeve. "I'm fine."

He gave a half-smile and nodded as he gently squeezed her hand. "There they are." 

  
  
"Oh, would you like to know the sex?" Stephen asked. At least it took attention away from her crying. 

  
  
"Yes, of course!" G'Kar beamed. From what Lyta could gather, Narns didn't care much about gender variation. For G'Kar, this was more about knowing as much as he could about the kid than establishing arbitrary gender roles.

  
  
She felt like she was in the test tube again with the way everything sounded distant and underwater. She barely heard when Stephen said "female", but it somehow made things even more dizzyingly real.

  
  
Even so, it was a challenge to get it through her head that what was on the screen was what was inside of her. She wanted to flatten her hand against her stomach, to connect as much as she could despite the skin between them. But really it was already connected to her in every possible way, and she was connected to it, too. She was all it had ever known, besides G'Kar's voice, anyway. Did it even have ears yet? 

  
  
She shook the question out of her head. Stephen had been talking about its development, about anti-nausea medication and supplements, about God knows what. She should have been listening, but when she tuned in he mentioned something about all the info being in a file he'd upload into the ship's drive. That was the first moment of relief she'd felt since he walked on board. "Lyta, do you have any questions?" 

  
  
She just swallowed and shakily shook her head. "No. None. Thank you, Stephen." 

  
  
"Oh." He frowned in a way that made her glare. "Well, alright then. I'm always a call away if you need anything else."

The scans were also uploaded for them to keep, but when the screen blinked off and she could no longer see her-- _it_ , everything felt wrong. She missed it. And she shouldn't have. She was never going to get to know her own daughter and she needed to be okay with that. She needed to stay detached. 

  
  
But how could she stay detached to something that was part of her in every possible way?

After stopping to offer scattered pieces of advice and observations, Stephen finally left. Lyta cleaned herself up and pulled her shirt back down, pretending to adjust the fabric as an excuse to keep her hand on her abdomen.

  
  
"Incredible, is it not?" G'Kar asked. She'd never seen his red eyes so bright, even if one wasn't real.

  
  
She couldn't bring herself to answer.

  
  
-

  
  
It was late at night that Lyta found herself at the ship's console. She wished she'd been listening earlier, because it was taking far longer than it should've to find the files Stephen had left. And, considering how she was doing this in the dark when she was fairly certain G'Kar was asleep, asking him was off the table. He definitely knew where they were, too, considering how he'd spent every moment after Stephen's departure glued to the files. 

  
  
Eventually, she managed to find the folder. She wasn't ready, however, for the scan recordings to pop up and play. She shook her head like that would be enough to suppress her heart. It was hard to make out much, but… it didn't matter. That was her own baby cradled inside of her own achy body. It squirmed in the recording, something she hadn't yet felt but found herself longing to. And then she realized she wanted more: to see her grow in future scans, to make out the features of her face, to… to hold her when the time came.

  
  
Her vision blurred. Even though she could hardly see the screen, something in her whispered _"Mine._ That's _mine,"_ and… and that was the most dangerous thought of all.

  
  
The lights lifted, causing her to jump.

"Lyta?" G'Kar asked. She was too busy scrambling to shove away the files, but it was no use. His hand gently fell onto her shoulder, telling her he'd already seen.

  
  
She wiped her eyes. "I was just… I was just trying to find the doses." 

  
  
When her hand searched for the right button to make it all go away, his own rested atop hers first. "You do not need to hide things from me." 

  
She almost laughed. Her hand had found its way to her stomach, shirt tight against it. "What exactly am I hiding?"

  
  
"I couldn't help but notice," he began, taking a deep breath. She felt sick at his pause, lasting longer than it should've because he took the time to sit in the pilot chair and turn it toward her. "Earlier. You spoke of the child as though it was not… You called her 'it.'" 

  
  
She swallowed against a lump in her throat. "So?"

  
  
He sighed. "It is okay to feel whatever it is you--"

  
  
"Stop." She had to blink back a few tears before she could confidently speak. "It isn't about what I feel." 

  
  
"Tell me what is wrong," he said. "Please."

  
  
She doubted he was ready for it, but she couldn't stop herself. Everything was all knotted up inside her head and it had far more control than she did at the moment. "You know, I never thought I'd be like them; the Vorlons, Psi Corps, but…" Hot tears ran down her face at the memories of abandonment and ostracization and _pain_ , at the fact that her own kid could deal with everything she'd had to endure. "I don't deserve to know her."

He looked distraught. His chair wasn't all that far away, but it still felt too far. "Where is this coming from?"

  
  
"The deal I made with your people, for one."

  
  
"They won't know she even exists. I swear it."

It didn't change the fact she'd made the deal at all. "I hated the Vorlons for what they did to me… where they left me. The Corps, too, they weren't much different. I thought I'd learned better."

  
  
“You have," he insisted, and for a moment she wished she could see what he did. "You are nothing like them, Lyta."

  
  
"Then how come I'm doing the same exact thing as them? Making…." Her breath was involuntary, shaky. "Making an innocent little telepath who's going to have a whole life of struggles ahead of her."

  
  
His features softened. "You did not know this could happen."

  
"I should've guessed."

  
  
"And if you had?"

  
  
"Then we wouldn't be here having this conversation."

  
  
"We also," he said softly, angling his chair back toward the screen. "Would not have that."

  
  
She blinked hard. The recording had continued, playing what looked like the baby yawning. Lyta didn't think she had any tears left in her, but she couldn't have been more wrong. In the time she took to wipe her eyes with her palms, G'Kar had gotten up and hugged her tight.

  
  
It wasn't fair; to her, to her baby, to any of them, but... the three of them were finally together in their own little way. So she let herself forget, for a moment she didn't deserve, that she would be leaving them just as her own mother and the Vorlons had left her.

  
  
\- 

  
  
It wasn't Stephen who ended up delivering the baby. It was a student of his, Lilian Hobbs, who currently worked on Babylon 5 of all places. She'd performed several ultrasounds in the place of Stephen over the previous months, leaving the luxury of the station with as much equipment as she could carry. And she had submitted to many, many telepathic scans to prove her intentions, but Lyta still felt uneasy having another person in on it all.

  
  
It made things more dangerous, and it made Lyta feel more and more like something to be _studied._ But it wasn't like they had much of a choice. No matter how much Lyta claimed she didn't care, if something… if something had happened to the baby, something that could have easily been prevented by being a bit less negligent in her medical care, she would never have forgiven herself; even if on her worst days she wondered if it would've been for the best. 

  
Her efforts hadn't been for nothing as it turned out. The baby was here. She was small and pink, with light spots freckling her skin. She'd hardly opened her eyes since an earlier yawn that scrunched up half her face in a way that made Lyta's heart melt, even from so far away from the exam table. But even though so much of her looked like G'Kar… those eyes were unmistakably her own.

It was hard, harder than actually giving birth, to watch Hobbs poke and prod at a newborn child like she was a lab rat from afar. She'd hoped briefly that Hobbs would be less like Stephen about it, less focused on the miracles of science and more focused on _people_. Hobbs tried not to show it at least, but it was all to present in her demeanor; all too present in the thoughts Lyta was too exhausted, and too worried, frankly, to not hear.

Yeah, she got it, her kid was something new. Narn-Human hybrids as the result of Vorlon tampering weren't something people came across every day. But… even when she was pregnant, Hobbs and Stephen would always get so enthusiastic about the wrong things.

  
She knew she could trust them. It wasn't about that anymore.

  
  
She just didn't want her kid to be a freak among her own kind, if such a thing even counted. She knew what it was like - the stares, the ostracization. The last thing she'd needed was someone studying her like they would a mouse in a cage, an animal at the zoo. 

  
  
The thing was, she was an adult. She'd consented, reluctantly, but consciously nonetheless to allowing Stephen and Hobbs into this whole thing. She agreed to let herself be studied like she was once again in a test tube on the Vorlon homeworld because it was what was best for a baby she didn't mean to make.

  
  
But her baby was a _baby_ , and before she'd even been born she was already a spectacle. She deserved better than that, but Lyta basically signed her up for a lifetime of bullshit. Hell, she was barely an hour old and Lyta hadn't even held her yet. 

  
_  
_She'd told herself time and time again that this was where her part would be over, but she couldn't tear her eyes away. She looked over to where Hobbs and G'Kar were standing, looked over to the tiny pink, freckled baby, eyes closed, totally unaware of the world she'd been born into. She was so small, and Lyta _needed_ to protect her, but right now letting her be studied was the only way to do it.

Guilt wracked her body, which was the last thing she needed considering she'd just given birth. But it was there, no matter how many reassurances G'Kar gave her, and it didn't seem like it planned on going away any time soon.

After what felt like an eternity, Lyta finally got to hold her with the excuse of skin-to-skin. It was hard to see her with the way she lied against Lyta's chest, but if she got a better look at her she'd burst into tears again and with G'Kar's hovering that was the last thing she wanted.

On a level he couldn't see, however, there was a warmth spreading between them that made Lyta realize she'd been freezing her whole life. It was selfish, she thought, to love a child because of how it served her. It was another thing that made her no different from the Vorlons or Psi Corps. But when the baby's tiny little fingers wrapped around her own, she realized she could never imagine going back into the cold; and maybe that counted for something.


End file.
